


Trustworthy

by luckie_dee



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M, x-files au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 05:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5194313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckie_dee/pseuds/luckie_dee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An X-Files AU featuring Scully!Chris and Mulder!Darren, heavily inspired by scenes from the X-Files episodes <i>Pilot</i> and <i>Ice</i>, with a reference to the events of <i>Squeeze</i>. It's also a cabin!fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trustworthy

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : Discussion of parasitic insects (possibly of extraterrestrial origin), creepiness on par with an episode of the X-Files, mentions of violence, a few swear words, and an ambiguous ending. No porn (shocking for me, I know). 
> 
> **Author's Note** : Written for [Sarah](http://lovetheblazer.tumblr.com/) – happy birthday to my lovely X-Files rewatch companion!! ♥ I hope you have a wonderful day, and we need to get back to Mulder and Scully soon. Thank you to [Lindsey]() for the last-minute beta and to [Mandy](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/) for making sure this was X-Filesy enough. Title inspired by the infamous _trust no one_.

Chris isn’t sure what to expect when he pushes open the door of the basement office where his new partner, Special Agent Darren “Creepy” Criss, is hidden away. It’s definitely _not_ a disarmingly handsome man with a bright smile, warm eyes, and sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. Chris is — intrigued.

Then their introductory conversation devolves into an argument about Yeti, which Agent Criss steadfastly believes are real.

Maybe Chris isn’t so intrigued after all.

*

In the year since, they’ve dealt with cases involving — if you ask Agent Criss — vampires, aliens, and shapeshifters. Chris is more inclined to blame psychosis, serial killers, and experimental gene therapy, but despite the differences in opinion, he’s come to trust and enjoy his new partner. They’ve each saved each other’s asses a handful of times, and Agent Criss isn’t _terrible_ company. His personality is unique (and okay, sometimes it borders on obnoxious), but he’s not a bad person. They actually share some of the same interests and the spirited discussions and arguments they have make stakeouts significantly more bearable.

That, unfortunately, is not the current atmosphere in the cabin. It’s hard to be upbeat when they’re each eyeing the other warily, watching for signs of madness brought on by strange parasitic insects. Agent Criss, of course, is convinced that they’re extraterrestrial in origin, but Chris sees no reason to think anything other than the bugs are native to some other part of the world, and recently transported to the United States in someone’s suitcase. 

“Have you ever heard of any species of insect that does this shit?” Agent Criss had challenged him, back in their office in Washington, when they were reading about the bug, the way it attaches to the brain stem and along the top of the spinal column, injecting a toxin that causes homicidal mania, seizures, and eventual death. “Any insect on earth?” 

“Well,” Chris had replied, his scientist’s mind already clicking through possibilities, “there is _Ophiocordyceps unilateralis_ —”

“That’s a fungus that controls ants,” Agent Criss interjected, his tone dismissive. “It’s not even in the same league. This is a whole new species, and you know it.”

Chris had just shrugged, unmoved. “And _you_ know as well as I do that an average of fifteen thousand new species are discovered every year. Doesn’t mean there’s alien DNA involved.” 

“Whatever you say, Colfer,” he’d said, but there’s no malice in the words. Agent Criss calls him that, using his last name only, _Colfer_ , and he somehow makes it sound like a private nickname, even though it’s standard process around the Bureau. Chris has a hard time dropping the “Agent,” because then it just sounds like he’s using his own first name.

Agent Criss uses Chris's last name now, a week or so after the conversation about the toxins and the new species. “You know, Colfer,” he says thoughtfully, “there’s a whole stack of board games on the shelves over there. What’s your pleasure? Monopoly? Or um…” He squints. “Mall Madness? Prize Property? Bigfoot the Giant Snow Monster Game? Are those real or is there a parasitic insect attached to my brain stem right now?”

Chris frowns at him and glances over his shoulder. He’s relieved to see the titles Agent Criss had mentioned, because that means that they probably don’t have to worry about hallucinations. Probably. Yet. “Don’t joke about that, and I would assume the Bigfoot game is right up your alley.” 

“Should we give it a try?” Even as he says it, Agent Criss stays buried inside his pile of blankets, on the brown couch across the room from the green one that Chris is huddled on. The cabin they’ve stumbled upon is one of a small cluster of rentals that’s closed for the season, which means no heat and no running water, but it does mean a roof overhead and a closet stocked with blankets, quilts, and spare pairs of guest pajamas. Their own clothes are outside, wrapped in plastic, waiting to be burned or abandoned. 

Even though it’s not yet November, the north woods of Wisconsin are unseasonably cold, and Chris is glad that they don’t have to spend the night outdoors or try to navigate back to the car — sitting on the side of some road miles away — in the dark. His own phone had been lost in the struggle with their insect-infected suspect-slash-patient, and Agent Criss’s isn’t picking up any kind of signal. The land line in the cabin doesn't even give a dial tone, so it means a night spent there, and then a long walk in the morning.

Provided that neither of them is infected, of course. In that respect, Chris is almost glad that they’re sequestered alone. If either of them starts exhibiting symptoms of psychosis, well — the other can end it right then and there. They don’t have a way to extract the insects, especially not out here in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't be Chris’s desired outcome, but there’s some cold comfort in knowing that the infection will stop with them. Their suspect — the last known victim — is already dead out in the woods, and any bugs that had been left alive won’t survive the cold night. 

“No,” Chris finally responds, deadpan. “I don’t want to try playing Bigfoot the Giant Snow Monster Game.” 

The blankets around Agent Criss’s shoulders move, like he’s shrugging underneath. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

“Your life motto, I assume,” Chris retorts. 

“Okay, okay, no Bigfoot game. Kill, Marry, Fuck? Or how about Would You Rather?”

“What if we discuss the case to make sure we’re ready to file our reports?” Chris proposes optimistically. Because they’re going to get out of this alive. They are. He doesn’t want to spend time dwelling on the possibility that one of them might be infected. It won’t help.

Agent Criss sighs. “We’re going to have hours tomorrow when we can talk about parasitic insects to our hearts’ content,” he points out. “We have to find the car, get to an airport, fly to Washington...”

“Fine,” Chris mutters. “Okay, um... Would You Rather. You start. Hit me.” 

After a contemplative pause, Agent Criss says slowly, “If you had to go without one for the rest of your life, would you rather give up cheese or oral sex?”

“Oh my god.” 

*

Chris isn't sure how much time has passed when he lifts one hand to rub wearily at his stiff neck when he feels it. A bump, raised, just to one side of his spine, unmistakable as Chris brushes his fingers over it again. 

For a second, he just feels numb, numb and cold, like the three blankets wrapped around his shoulders have disappeared. He thinks of his sister; he thinks of his cat, and then, his fingertips still pressed to the spot, he says, “Darren.” 

It’s enough to make Agent Criss, who looks like he’s barely managing not to doze, snap his head up in surprise. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I have a bump,” Chris announces. His tone is clinical, detached. “On my neck.”

“Oh,” Agent Criss replies, in the strangest, smallest voice Chris has ever heard from him. 

“You’re going to have to take a look at it,” Chris continues. “Confirm —” he falters a little “—confirm the diagnosis.” 

Agent Criss nods. His eyes are huge and his face is pale. Chris carefully extricates himself from his nest of blankets and crosses the room. He lifts his hands to the buttons of his borrowed pajamas, and they’re shaking a little, but it’s beyond his control now. Everything is beyond his control now He turns as he gets the pajama top partway open, letting it slide down enough to expose his neck, and asks, “Well?”

“I can’t…” Agent Criss clears his throat, tries again. “I can’t really see from here.” Chris hears movement, and then there’s a warm hand on his shoulder. His collar is pushed a bit farther aside, and Chris tips his chin down to give Agent Criss a better view. 

“You know what to look for, right?” Chris asks, staring down at the carpet unseeingly. He hugs his arms around his middle and tries not to shiver in the cold. “A faint maculopapular rash that deepens around larger nodules where the insects are attached under the sk—” 

“There’s no rash,” Agent Criss interrupts him. His fingertips are gentle on Chris’s skin, smoothing and probing gently over Chris’s neck and upper back. Chris hisses as he encounters a particularly sensitive spot. “You have some scrapes and bruising from when you were thrown against that tree. I think that’s what this bump is from too —” He sweeps his fingers over the spot, just a whisper of pressure, and then he starts checking Chris’s hairline, combing through the short-bristling strands. Chris does shiver then. “It’s not a bug.”

Relief makes Chris feel suddenly weak, and he sways on his feet before a horrible thought occurs to him. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Agent Criss’s hands go still, but he doesn’t remove them from Chris's body. “Well, you could look in a mirror. But why would I lie?” 

“You might if _you’re_ infected,” Chris points out, and immediately wishes he could snatch the words back. 

Agent Criss’s fingers tighten on his shoulder, and in the few seconds before he speaks, Chris is sure he’s made a dreadful mistake. “I guess you’ll have to check me too,” he finally says, and then he releases Chris, who feels strangely bereft as he hikes his pajama top back up.

“That would probably be wise,” Chris croaks. 

He pivots to find Agent Criss already turning, his hands loosening the buttons over his chest. Without looking at Chris, he presents his back, letting his pajama shirt droop down to reveal the smooth expanse of his neck and shoulders. He certainly doesn’t appear to be infected, but like Agent Criss had done, Chris steps forward to look more closely, just in case. Agent Criss’s skin is warm, both in tone and in temperature, which Chris learns as he tentatively reaches out with one hand to examine it. He presses, gently but firmly, the areas where the insects are most likely to attach, but there are no bumps, no marks save a birthmark that he trails his fingers over as Agent Criss huffs out a breath.

Startled, Chris pulls his hand back. “You’re okay,” he announces, then clears his throat. “We’re okay.” 

“We’re okay,” Agent Criss confirms, and suddenly, unexpectedly, Chris is shaking from head to toe. Agent Criss’s features flood with worry when he faces Chris again, and he reaches out to rest both hands heavily on Chris’s shoulders while he tries to catch Chris’s eye. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong? Are you cold?”

“No,” Chris says, then amends, “well, yes,” because his pajama top is still hanging open halfway down his chest. “But I’m just — we’re _okay_.” He can’t articulate it any better than that, and he covers his face with his hands while Agent Criss carefully pulls him into a hug. He’s not crying; he’s just _relieved_ — that he’s not infected, and that he doesn’t have to contemplate anymore what he might have to do if Agent Criss were.

“We’re okay,” Agent Criss is repeating, low and right in his ear. “It’s been hours since we were exposed; we’d be showing symptoms by now. We’re going to be fine.” 

Chris nods, but apparently isn’t done shaking out the anxiety of the time that had passed, when he’d been sure that he was either going to end up with a bullet in his head or be forced to put one into the man who had become his closest friend. Or both. 

“Okay, all right,” Agent Criss says soothingly, drawing back a little. “Why don’t you join me and Mister Brown Couch for a while, Colfer?” He maneuvers Chris down onto the cushions, and Chris begins wrapping the blankets there around himself while Agent Criss retrieves the pile from the other sofa. He undoes Chris’s work when he returns — Chris makes a protesting noise when he feels the rush of cold air — but only to tuck them both into the same cocoon. He pulls Chris down against his chest and rubs a soothing hand over Chris’s back in a gentle, repetitive sweep. It’s not the first time they’ve comforted each other after surviving harrowing circumstances; in fact, it’s becoming the standard way they wrap up a dangerous case. Chris has been trying to ignore what it might mean.

“Sorry for freaking out,” Chris says eventually, when he feels more calm. 

Agent Criss keeps petting up and down his spine under the blanket. “You have nothing to apologize for."

“I don’t know,” Chris muses. He tries for a joke: “It’s not like I was at the mercy of a serial killer who was trying to steal my liver. _That_ was worth freaking out over.”

There’s a moment of silence. Agent Criss’s hand goes still, then rests heavily on Chris’s shoulderblade, tugging him a bit closer. “This was much worse than that,” he says, his voice barely registering above a murmur. “When that happened, there was something I could do about it. There was something I wanted to do, and that was make sure that you were fucking safe. If you had the parasite? I… I don’t know if I could have done it.” 

“You would have done what you needed to do,” Chris responds automatically. 

“Would you?” 

Chris pauses. “I want to believe that I would have.” He stops again, and waits, but Agent Criss doesn’t say anything, so Chris adds, “And I would have hated myself for it for the rest of my life.” 

Agent Criss just stays quiet. Chris is starting to feel kind of unnerved, and leans back to check his face, to make sure that he hasn’t dozed off in the twenty seconds since he’d last spoken. He finds Agent Criss awake, though heavy-lidded, watching Chris with a serious expression, his face cut into planes and shadows in the low light. “What are you —” Chris starts to ask, but his question is cut off by the warm press of lips.

Chris draws a quick, startled breath in through his nose, even though he’s both surprised and… not. The kiss is strong but yielding, lingering, and Chris — despite his better judgment — picks up where it leaves off, kissing again, kissing back. It happens again, and again, long moments of harsh breaths and clutching fingers, until Chris shakes himself and pulls away. “Darren,” he whispers.

“I like it when you call me that,” Darren replies, low. 

“We shouldn’t —” Chris says, and he’s flustered. “We shouldn’t…”

There’s supposed to be more to those sentences, but Darren seems to take them at face value. “Probably not according to the rules, no.” 

Chris gathers himself, taking in a deep lungful of air and letting it out slowly, trying to calm his galloping heart. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he admits. It’s the truth: here’s a man who’s smart — albeit often wrong — and funny and attractive, who’s passionate and caring, and who Chris has come to trust implicitly. But the stakes are too high. “It would just make things so complicated,” he tries to explain. “And I don’t… I don’t want to lose you.” He stumbles the words out, embarrassed to say them even though they’re the ones that matter most, because there are so many ways they could lose each other. 

Darren smiles, a resigned tilt of his mouth that presses his lips together, and Chris knows how firm-soft they are now. “Why don’t we sleep on it,” he suggests. “Reconvene in the morning. We’ve both been through a hell of a lot tonight.” 

Chris knows that a few hours aren't going to do much to change his mind, but he’s too tired to argue about it, so he just says, “Sleep is a good idea.”

He’s surprised when, instead of getting up so that they can relocate to the guest bedrooms, Darren shifts to stretch them out along the length of the couch, maneuvering Chris with him as he goes. He tucks in against the back cushions and pulls Chris’s arm over his side, cuddling it and getting comfortable. 

“Darren, I’m not sure —” he starts, but Darren cuts him off again.

“Just for tonight, Colfer. For body heat. Blame it on that. Please,” he says, the last word sincere and quiet. 

It feels good, and he’s warm underneath the blankets, spooning Darren’s body protectively. Chris lets himself relax into it. “Just for tonight,” he relents, “Darren.” 

Darren sighs, a small, tired, contented sound, and Chris closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ♥ Link to tumblr post [here](http://luckiedee.tumblr.com/post/133038397367/trustworthy-crisscolfer-fic).


End file.
